Crackling Mountain and Other Stories Read online

  Nonetheless, my marks that first term were the third highest in the class. Even in deportment I received an A. I seized my report card in one hand and, holding my shoes in the other, dashed out to the beach. Having been tormented by the prospect of failing, now I was absolutely elated.

  With the term over, I made preparations to go home for my first vacation from high school. My younger brother and his friends would hear of my brief experience in glowing terms. I stuffed everything I had acquired into the trunk, going so far as to include even the sitting cushions.

  Tossed about in the carriage, I came out of the woods of the neighboring village. The rich green of the rice paddies spread out like the sea, and the familiar roof of my own home, with its red tiles, rose conspicuously in the distance. I gazed toward home as though I had been away for ten years.

  Never have I been so elated as during the month of that vacation. To my younger brother I boasted of the school as something one might dream of. In my telling, even the small coastal town seemed part of a vision.

  I was supposed to paint five watercolors and collect ten rare insects for my homework. I spent the whole month wandering through the fields and the river valleys, sketching the landscape and looking for insects. I took my younger brother along for help. He could hold the collector’s kit, with the tweezers and jar of poison, while I carried the net on my shoulder. I chased after locusts and cabbage butterflies all day long. When night fell, I would get a crackling fire going in the park and, as the insects flew by, flail away at them with a net or a broom.

  My next older brother was enrolled in the sculpture division at art school. He was making a bust of my next older sister, who had just graduated from a girls’ school. While he fiddled with clay beneath the chestnut tree in the garden, I stood nearby sketching her portrait time and again.

  She may have taken her posing quite seriously, but my brother and I merely poked fun at each other’s work. My sister was usually more impressed with my work, yet my brother only ridiculed my talent. When you’re young, he claimed, everyone says you’re gifted. He dismissed my writing too, calling it grade-schoolish. In return I was openly contemptuous of his abilities.

  One evening this brother came over to where I slept and whispered, “Osa! I’ve got a bug for you!” Squatting on the floor, he slid a tissue wrapping beneath the edge of the mosquito net. He knew I was collecting rare insects. And when I heard the scratching noise inside the tissue as the insect struggled to get out, I realized what kinship meant. I undid the paper roughly, and my brother gasped, “He’ll get away! Look! Look!” I could see it was only a stag beetle, but I put it down as “sheathed and winged,” one of my ten types, and handed it in.

  I was depressed to see the vacation end. Returning all alone to my second-floor room at the dry-goods store, I opened my trunk and almost burst into tears. At such times I always sought refuge in a bookstore. There was one close by, and I hurried there now. Just to see all the books lining the shelves would lighten my mood as if by magic. This particular store had one corner containing a half dozen volumes that I couldn’t buy even though I wanted to. Now and then I would linger there and peek inside the covers. I would try to act casual, but my knees would be shaking. Of course, I didn’t go to bookstores just to read articles on anatomy. I went because any book gave me comfort and solace at the time.

  My schoolwork, however, became more and more boring. Nothing was worse than coloring in the mountain ranges, harbors, and rivers on an outline map. I was a stickler about things, so I would spend three or four hours at this. In history and certain other classes the teachers told us to take notes on the main points of the lectures. Listening to a lecture was like reading a textbook, so the students merely copied sentences straight from the book. Being attached to grades, I worked away at such tasks day after day.

  In the fall there were various athletic events for the high-school students in town. Out in the countryside we had never played baseball, so I only knew such terms as “center field,” “deep short,” and “bases loaded” from books. Eventually I learned how to watch a game, but I didn’t get worked up about it. Whenever my own school competed in tennis, judo, or even baseball, I had to join the cheering section. This made me dislike high school all the more.

  Our head cheerleader would look purposely shabby as he climbed the knoll in the schoolyard corner and, holding a fan with the rising sun insignia, give us a pep talk. Reacting to him, the students would cry out with glee, “Slob! You slob!” When a match took place, this cheerleader leaped up during every break in the action and started waving his fan. “ALL STAND UP!” he’d shout in his funny English. And we would get up, our tiny purple banners flapping in unison, and sing the fight song: “Our Foe is Worthy, But ...” It was quite embarrassing. When I spied an opportunity, I’d slip away from the cheering section and go home.

  Not that I myself never played sports. My complexion had a faint darkness, which I blamed on the massaging. I became flustered when people mentioned my face, for they seemed to be indicating this secret vice of mine. Somehow or other I felt I must improve my color. That’s why I took up sports.

  I had long fretted about my complexion. As early as my fourth or fifth year of elementary school, my next older brother had already spoken to me of democratic ideas.10 Then I heard certain complaints, even from Mother. She once told visitors to our home that democracy had meant much higher taxes and that most of the family harvest now went to the government. I was quite confused by the various things I heard. At the same, I tried to be democratic toward our family’s servants. In the summer I lent a hand to the men mowing the lawn, and in the winter I helped shovel snow from the roof. Eventually I discovered that my help wasn’t welcome. It even seems the men had to redo the part of the lawn that I had tried to mow. To tell the truth, I was actually trying to improve my color. But even hard work didn’t do any good.

  During high school I got into sports because of my complexion. On the way home from school in the summer, I always took a dip in the ocean. I liked to use the breast stroke, keeping my legs wide apart, just as a frog might. With my head sticking straight out of the water, I could observe various things even as I swam—the delicate shading of the waves, the fresh leaves on shore, the drifting clouds. I kept my head stretched out like a turtle. If I could bring my face even a bit closer to the sun, I’d get a tan that much quicker.

  There was a large graveyard behind the house where I lived. I laid out a hundred-meter course for myself and took up sprinting in earnest. Since the graveyard was surrounded by a dense row of tall poplars, I could loiter within the grounds and examine one requiem post after another whenever I got tired. I read some unforgettable phrases— “Moonlight Penetrates the Pool Bottom,” for example, or “Three Worlds, One Purpose.”

  One day, on a dark, moist gravestone covered with liverwort, I made out some writing that said, “The Deceased, Jakushō Seiryō.” Ascribed to the dead man in accord with Buddhist practice, the name evoked the solitude and quiet of the grave. Disturbed by this discovery, I made up several lines of verse and wrote them down on the white paper that had recently been folded like a lotus leaf and left before the grave. Intended to suggest a certain French poet, the lines read: I am in the ground now, together with the maggots. With my index finger I traced the words in mud as delicately as a ghost might have done.

  The next evening I went to the grave before I did my sprinting. The words of the ghost had washed away in the rain that morning, so none of the bereaved kin would have been offended by seeing them on a visit to the grave. The white lotus leaves had torn in places.

  Even as I fooled around like this, I got better at running. My leg muscles began to bulge too, but my complexion remained the same as ever. Beneath the deep tan on my face a pale, dirty color still lingered. It was quite unsavory.

  I was very intrigued by my face. When weary of reading, I would take out a hand mirror and gaze at myself. Smiling, frowning, looking contemplative with my cheek resting on m
y palm, I never got bored. I mastered certain expressions guaranteed to make people laugh. Wrinkling my nose, pursing my mouth, and squinting, I would turn myself into a charming bear cub. I chose that particular look when puzzled or dissatisfied.

  Around this time my next older sister was in the local hospital because of an illness. If I showed her my bear-cub face, she would roll about in bed laughing hard and holding her stomach. My sister had a middle-aged maid from home for company, but she was still lonely. That’s why my visits meant a lot to her. My slow footsteps in the hospital corridor echoed louder than those of other people, so my sister could hear me approaching her room. By the time I got there, she would be elated.

  If I didn’t visit her for a week, my sister would send the maid to fetch me. With a solemn look the maid would say, You’d better come or your sister’s temperature will go up. She’ll be worse off then.

  I was now fourteen or fifteen, and veins had become faintly visible on the back of my hand. I felt something strange and momentous taking place within me. I was secretly in love with a classmate, a short fellow with dark skin. We always walked home together after school, blushing when our little fingers merely grazed one another. Once, as we were heading along the back road after school, my friend noticed a lizard swimming right in a ditch where parsley and chickweed grew wild. Without a word he scooped up the lizard and gave it to me. I couldn’t stand such creatures, but I pretended to be overjoyed as I wrapped this one in my handkerchief. Back home, I released the lizard in the garden pool where it swam around, its tiny head wavering. I looked in the pool the next morning, but the lizard was gone.

  Stuck on myself, I never considered telling my companion how I felt. I usually didn’t say much to him, anyway. With the skinny girl from next door, it was even worse. She was a student too, and I was quite aware of her. Even when I came toward her on the street, though, I quickly looked away as if in contempt.

  One night in autumn a fire broke out near our house. Along with the others I got up to watch the flames shooting from the darkness of the neighborhood shrine and the sparks scattering all around. A grove of dark cedars loomed above the flames, and small birds darted through the air like innumerable fluttering leaves. I knew perfectly well that the girl was standing in her white pajamas by the gate next door and looking at me. I kept gazing toward the fire, though, with the side of my face toward her. I figured the glare of the flames would make my profile glitter and look splendid.

  Being this way, I couldn’t initiate anything on my own, neither with this classmate nor with the girl next door. When alone, though, I would act bold. I’d close one eye and laugh at myself in the mirror, or carve a thin mouth in the desktop with a knife and press my lips to it. When I colored it with red ink afterwards, the mouth turned so dark and ugly I gouged it out with my knife.

  One spring morning as I was heading for my third-year class in high school, I stopped on a bridge and leaned against the vermilion-painted railing. A wide stream flowed below, just like the Sumida River, and I drifted into a reverie the like of which I had never known. I felt as though someone else was behind me, and that I myself was always assuming some pose or other. I would comment on my every gesture, no matter how slight, as if I were standing beside my own self. Now he’s perplexed and is just looking at his palm—that’s what I would say. Or maybe—He muttered something now while scratching behind his ear. Because of this habit, I could no longer act on the spur of the moment, as one less aware of himself would. When I came out of that reverie on the bridge, I trembled in my loneliness. And, while still in this mood, I thought of my past and my future. I went on across the bridge, various memories coming to mind, my footgear clattering on the floorboards. Again, I fell to dreaming. And I finally let out a sigh. Could I really become someone?

  That’s when I started getting fretful. Since I couldn’t be satisfied with anything, I kept writhing about in vain. Masks in one layer after another—as many as ten or twenty—had fastened themselves upon me, and I could no longer tell how sad any one of them really was. In the end I found a dreary way out of my dilemma—I would be a writer. There were many others who were subject to this same sort of incomprehensible agitation, and all of them would be my confederates.

  My younger brother had started high school by then, and the two of us shared a room. After talking over the matter, we got together with five or six friends and began a little magazine. A large printing shop stood just down the street on the other side, and I easily arranged to have our magazine produced there. I had the shop use a pretty lithograph for the front cover too. When everything was ready, we distributed copies to our classmates.

  Thereafter I published something in each monthly issue. At first I wrote philosophic stories on ethical questions. I proved adept at composing a few lines in the style of the fragmentary essay. We kept the magazine going for about a year, but I got into trouble with my oldest brother about it.

  Anxious about this mania for writing, my brother sent me a long letter from home. Chemistry uses equations, he wrote, while geometry depends on theorems. With literature, however, there wasn’t anything equivalent to these equations or theorems that helped clarify matters. That’s why genuine understanding of literature came only with age and the right circumstances.

  My brother had written in a formal and stiff manner, and I agreed with what he said. In fact, he had set down my very qualifications. Responding immediately, I wrote that I was truly fortunate to have such a splendid older brother. His letter was right on the mark. However, I had to point out that my interest in literature didn’t hamper my studies. Indeed, I worked all the harder because of it. I let my brother know exactly where I stood, mixing in some exaggerated feeling here and there.

  More than anything, I felt I had to stand out from the crowd. The very thought kept me at my books, and, from the third year of high school, I was always at the head of the class. For someone who doesn’t want to be thought a drudge, that’s quite an accomplishment. Instead of my classmates jeering at me, I actually brought them to heel, including the judo champ we had nicknamed Octopus. In one corner of the room there was a large jar for wastepaper. Sometimes I would point to it and wonder out loud if an octopus could fit inside. The champ would stick his head in the jar and let out a strange, reverberating laugh.

  The good-looking fellows in class were devoted to me as well. Even when I cut out triangular, hexagonal, and flower-shaped plasters and pasted them over my pimples, no one joked about it.

  The pimples were distressing all the same, especially when they kept on spreading. Each morning when I awoke, I would run my hand over my face to see how things were. I bought all sorts of ointments, but nothing seemed to work. Before going to the drugstore, I’d write down the name of the ointment. Do you have any of this? I would ask, showing the scrap of paper with the writing. I had to make it seem I was doing someone else a favor.

  I was horny—that’s what the pimples really showed. The mere thought made me dizzy with shame. Actually, I’d be better off dead. My face attained its greatest notoriety within my family just about then. My oldest sister, who had gone to live with her husband’s household, supposedly said that no woman would come to our own house as my bride. Informed of this, I applied even more ointment.

  My younger brother worried about my pimples too. Time after time he went to buy medicine in my stead. As children my brother and I had never gotten along; when he took the entrance exam for high school, I prayed that he would fail. After we began living together away from home, though, I gradually came to appreciate my brother’s even temper. As he grew up, he turned quiet and shy. Occasionally he submitted an essay to the magazine, but his writing was flat. His grades didn’t look good next to mine either, and this troubled him. I would be sympathetic, and then he’d get even more discouraged. His hair came down in a widow’s peak over his forehead, something he detested as effeminate. He sincerely believed that his narrow forehead had made him a dunce.

  When I was with someo
ne during this period of my life, I would either reveal everything about myself or else conceal it. To be honest, the only one I really confided in was this brother of mine. He told me everything about himself and I did the same.

  One dark night in early autumn we went out to the harbor wharf. A breeze was blowing in from the strait as we talked about the red string my Japanese-language teacher had once described. The teacher had said that each boy in the class had such a string tied to the baby toe of his right foot, but no one could see it. The other end was always attached to a girl’s baby toe. The string was very long, and it wouldn’t break even when the boy and girl were far apart. It wouldn’t tangle either, even if the two of them met right on the street. And, our teacher said, this string meant that the boy and girl were destined to marry each other.

  When I first heard this story, I was so excited that I rushed home to tell my younger brother. And that evening on the wharf, listening to the waves and the cry of the sea gulls, we spoke of the red string once again.

  What’s your wife-to-be doing right now? I asked.

  My brother shook the wharf railing two or three times with both hands. Then, somewhat awkwardly, he said, She’s walking in a garden.

  That was just like my brother. Yes, a young girl in large wooden clogs, walking in a garden with her fan and gazing at the primroses—how perfect for him.

  Now it was my turn. Gazing out at the dark sea, I said, Mine’s wearing a red sash. And then I closed my mouth tight. A ferry boat heading across the strait seemed to roll on the horizon, its windows entirely lit up as though the boat were actually a large inn.

  One thing I had kept from my brother. When I came back for the vacation that summer, a new maid was Working in the house. Wearing a red sash over her yukata, this petite girl had been very abrupt in helping me out of my shirt and trousers. Her name, I had learned, was Miyo.